IRAN: MANDATORY DEATH FOR APOSTATES DEBATED IN PARLIAMENT
ISTANBUL, July 9 (Compass Direct News) – A penal code that would mandate the death penalty for those who promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy even on the Internet is expected to go to debate soon in Iran’s parliament.
If passed, the penal code drafted last January would require execution of any Muslim who converts to Christianity. Under sharia (Islamic) law, apostasy is one of several “crimes” that can be punishable by death, although Islamic court judges are not required to hand down such a sentence.
The draft of the penal code under consideration explicitly sets death as a fixed punishment that cannot be changed, reduced or annulled.
Many believe that the government intends to use the proposed penal code to clamp down on the surge in conversions in Iran over the last few years. Commentators have called the surge a “mass exodus” from Islam, which in its Iranian Shiite version imposes harsh limitations on lifestyle and personal freedoms.
On July 2 Iran’s Members of Parliament voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported last week. The news agency noted that the draft bill also includes the death penalty for “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy.”
According to the current penal code, the death sentence is already applicable to rape, adultery and armed robbery, among other crimes. The draft adds apostasy and cyber-crimes to the list and stipulates that those convicted of these crimes should be punished as “mohareb” (enemy of God) and “corrupt on the earth,” according to AFP.
Over the last few years, the Internet and media such as television have been conduits of information on Christianity and are feared as sources of “corruption” of the Iranian people. The Internet is widely used in Iran despite restricted access for thousands of websites with “immoral” content or content – including Christian ones – deemed as insulting religion and promoting political dissent.
The number of executions in Iran reached 317 last year, up from 177 recorded by Amnesty International in 2006. Human rights organizations have criticized Iran for making excessive use of the death penalty, but Tehran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process, reported the AFP.
In a statement earlier this year, the European Union (EU) criticized the penal code draft and particularly Section Five on the death penalty for apostasy. The EU said this section and other parts of the code violated Tehran’s commitments under international human rights conventions.
Christians in particular have suffered persecution in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979. No converts to Christianity have been convicted of “apostasy” since international pressure forced officials to drop the death sentence of Christian convert Mehdi Dibaj in 1994. But in the years following the convert’s release, Dibaj and four other Protestant pastors, including converts and those working with converts, have been brutally murdered.
The murderers of the Christians have never been brought to justice, and local believers suspect the government played a role in the killings.
Christian converts are regularly arrested and imprisoned without due process, tortured and placed under surveillance. Muslims who have embraced Christianity have no right to practice their newfound faith, and the printing of the Bible in Farsi, the national language, has been banned.
Report from Compass Direct News